Looksmaxxing: why chasing beauty can't heal the soul
The practice of "maximizing" your face and body promises respect and attention, but leaves the heart just as empty.
Looksmaxxing is the practice of "maximizing" physical appearance among young men, inside and outside the church. The Gospel Coalition analyzes why chasing beauty can't heal the soul. The article warns of a discipleship crisis.
What looksmaxxing promises
CJ Fant, the author of the text, describes this trend as having questionable origins and ideology: it takes Darwinian and often contemptuous views of masculinity and attraction and exaggerates them. In its healthiest form, these are men who encourage each other to train, dress well, and take care of their beard.
In its most harmful form, they rank each other on brutal scales and push each other toward invasive surgeries to correct perceived flaws in the face or body.
«The masculinity God forms is not measured in inches.»
The promise that holds it all together is simple: if you manipulate your body to look more attractive and more masculine according to the mold, other men will respect you more and women will pay more attention to you. That's why some break their femur to gain a few inches of height, with six months of recovery.
Others practice "bonesmashing": hitting the jaw with a hammer so it grows back harder and more defined. Wanting to look good isn't the problem. The problem appears when the body takes the place only God can fill and even the best workout becomes a burden.
A discipleship crisis in the church
The article argues that young men spend a lot of time online and that this dries up their soul and warps their way of seeing the world. One example is incel communities, a word that combines "involuntary" and "celibate." It's the self-diagnosis of young people who feel excluded after failing in their search for love, and who blame culture, women, or their appearance.
From those online spaces come, as slang, terms like "alpha male," "mewing," "mogging," and the suffix "maxxing," according to the same article. The #looksmaxxing tag on TikTok gathers almost 380,000 posts. Many who practice looksmaxxing are not celibate, but they share the cynicism and defeatist mindset of those forums.
Additionally, looksmaxxers spread pseudoscientific concepts, such as the "PSL scale," which claims to measure attractiveness on a supposedly empirical scale from 0 to 8. The text notes that young Christians may not know that ideology, but they have heard of "mewing" and feel insecure when approaching Christian women who sit near them in church. Influencers like Androgenic, Brett Maverick, or Clavicular, the online name of Braden Peters, promise quick shortcuts to look better.
Peters has more than 300,000 followers on Kick and more than a million on TikTok. According to the article, he was accused of rape in Massachusetts and was previously imprisoned for assault and for shooting an already dead alligator during a livestream.
There's the gap: daughters are warned early about harmful images, but do parents and youth leaders do the same with sons? Many young people don't have discipleship relationships with older brothers or fathers in the faith, and they look for answers about romance, sex, work, and the meaning of life in videos and podcasts.
What Zacchaeus was really looking for
The author returns to the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19 and its best-known detail: he was short in stature and couldn't see over the crowd. The solution the world offers would be to break a bone to gain inches and thus get the respect he longed for. But Zacchaeus wasn't looking for status or fame: he was looking for a Savior. "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10, ESV).
Should you then neglect your body? No. The Bible calls it the temple of the Holy Spirit, and taking care of your health honors God (see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). But it also warns: "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain" (Proverbs 31:30, ESV). The tallest will be defeated by gravity, and strong arms will weaken with age. The masculinity God forms is not measured in inches.
Look for an older brother in the faith to help you read with discernment what you consume. Talk to your pastor or youth leader about your doubts about romance and identity before looking for answers in a video. Ask God to form in you a masculinity like Jesus': strong and tender, just and kind, secure because it is anchored in him and not in a mirror.
